Read the report

Suppose you’re the CEO of a large business. One day, an anonymous tipster mails you bank records suggesting that one of your key subordinates, an employee responsible for millions of dollars in corporate purchasing decisions, has been making substantial personal deposits that can’t be accounted for by any known source of income.

Alarmed, you summon the executive to your office and ask him to identify the source of the mysterious deposits. He declines to do so, protesting that you have produced no evidence of wrongdoing and that your mere suspicion that he has been pocketing kickbacks from your company’s suppliers don’t obligate him to unmask his benefactor, who prefers to remain anonymous.

Do you:

1) Suspend him without pay until he comes clean about the source of the second income?

2) Tell that person that you are limiting his authority over purchasing decisions until you can satisfy yourself that your company’s interests weren’t compromised?

3) Or concede that the exec’s financial affairs are none of your business and assure him that he retains your complete confidence?

Farfetched as the above scenario may seem, it fairly approximates the dilemma Michigan voters face as they struggle to decide whether their elected leaders deserve their trust.

According to a new, exhaustively researched report made public last week by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, it’s becoming more and more difficult for voters to know who’s contributing money to influence public policy in our state or for what purpose.

Consider:

■ Since 2000, anonymous donors have bankrolled at least $88 million in TV advertising to promote the election of candidates for public office.

■ In the 2012 election cycle, $18 million — or $1 out of every three spent on election campaigns for state office — was contributed by donors whose identities and motives remain unknown.

■ In the 2012 contest for two seats on the Michigan Supreme Court, three-fourths of the nearly $19 million spent was provided by anonymous donors, including some, it is reasonable to guess, with a rooting interest in controversies pending before the state’s highest court.

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Some will no doubt argue that the public should not confuse anonymous contributions to promote a candidate’s election with bribes paid directly to influence a candidate’s vote.

The latter, after all, are criminal violations punishable by imprisonment; the former, in most cases, comport perfectly with the Michigan secretary of state’s opinion that neither candidates nor donors are obliged to reveal the source of money for so-called issue ads (“Call Sen. Shlabotnik and tell him what you think of his campaign to slaughter kittens!”) so long as the ads don’t explicitly endorse a particular candidate.

But what, practically speaking, is the difference to voters whose interests are compromised by both forms of spending? Why should we hold the state legislator who benefits from a smear campaign financed by anonymous special interests in any higher esteem than the mayor caught stuffing cash down his pants in a public restroom?

I, for one, am tired of honoring such a specious distinction. Like the CEO in the scenario described above, I think an employee who refuses to let an employer know who else is paying him or her, or for what purpose, has forfeited that employer’s trust.

So if you’re running for office, tell us what you’re doing to restore transparency to Michigan’s campaign finance system — or excuse us for assuming the worst about your campaign and the shadowy benefactors whose names you dare not speak.